Sling your hook!

I’m still at the very ealry stages of my 1950’s novel about local reporteer Mike Scott. I don’t know how others who write historical fiction set about it, but at the moment I’m not checking up too many details, I’m just trying to get the story written. I’m able to put in some things – I’ve read enough books set tat that time, seen enough films, and have memories of what my parents and aunties and uncles told me, as well as family photographs.

This is an except – Mike is walking to meet his friend Adam and has taken a sort cut through a rougher part of town:

Mike’s head was full of thoughts as he strolled down Station Road. He crossed over almost without looking and took the short cut through Byrham, once a small village now just an area of Easthope between the Station and the High Street. Many of the dilapidated cottages here had housed the workers for the couple of factories, the umbrella factory and the felt factory, both long closed and their ghostly forms loured over this side of town.

It was a tatty part of town and groups of lads hung around as usual; they watched him hurry past but apart from a few cat calls said nothing. As he rounded the corner someone shouted something undecipherable and there was a chorus of rough laughter.

Urchins, guttersnipes… for some reason they really got his goat, and head down Mike strode along thinking angry words and the article he would write about the declining standards of the youth of today… once they did their National Service that would sort them out!

The next thing he knew he was on all fours and a fight seemed to be going on around him. What had happened? He grasped a handy lamppost and got to his feet. On the step of the New Hotel, an ironic name surely, was a group of louts, no doubt the fathers of the kids back round the corner. Facing them with blood pouring from his nose was a small dark haired man, his fists raised, crouched in a pugilistic stance.

“Come on you shower! Come on, take me on if you dare! One on one and I’ll kill the lot of you!” blood sprayed as he shouted.

“Sling yer hook, off, gypsy! We don’t want your stink in here!” a fat greasy oaf bellowed and they laughed, but they stayed in the doorway.

It suddenly came to Mike where he knew this man from – he was the drunk from the other night, the man back from Korea, the local hero… and these louts were…

Something hit Mike on the chest and looking down he saw a rotten tomato sliding down his jacket – it was one of the kids from the gang, they’d followed him, no doubt hearing the shouts and abuse from their fathers.

Incensed by the situation, and furious for many other reasons, Mike inexplicably launched into a verbal attack on the men standing  laughing now at him.

“You disgraceful bunch of layabouts! Why not look after your own children and bring them up to show respect! Oh, of course, you can’t because you have no respect! How dare you throw this man out of your pub! He served his country with pride – did you?!”

“You little shrimp! What did you do in the war, sonny? Catering corps was it? You look more like a pen-pusher to me!”

The bloated drunk who now lurched out of the pub towards him, grinning like a fool, could not have said a worse thing to Mike, couldn’t have touched a sorer spot than his pen-pushing taunt touched.

Mike stepped towards him and later reflected that there surely would have been a blood bath, and the blood joining the dribbled remains of the tomato down his shirt would have been his own – except suddenly, unexpectedly the fat man was on his back looking up dazed.

“Want some more?” shouted the man who’d been thrown out of the pub. “Come on, who’s next?”

A lanky man stepped forward swearing obscenely, outraged at what had happened to Fred, the man still lying in the gutter. He whirled his arms around but the local hero dodged in close and swiftly decked him.

… and that was about the end of it… the crowd from the pub were shouting they would call the rozzers, that the gypsy scum better not come back, that they’d get him and take that shrimp with you,

© Lois Elsden 2018

Here’s a link to the books I’ve already published:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_9?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=lois+elsden&sprefix=lois+elsd%2Caps%2C145&crid=E7T4XQV69EB8